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Capitol News Update     

 

August 6, 2012 

 

           I was asked this week if I thought there is a chance that Governor Fallin will expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act and accept the federal funding that goes with it. I had to answer that I really don't know. Well, of course there's a chance, but how realistic?

 

            No question, all bets are off if President Obama is defeated for re-election. I mentioned before, I think, no matter how the election goes, at some point we'll end up with a healthcare system that looks a lot like "Obamacare." But it will take a lot longer and be a lot messier if the President is defeated. One fallout of a Romney presidency will surely be that states like Oklahoma will opt out of anything that looks like it.

 

            The real question is what will happen if the president is re-elected. To most people who provide health and related social services, accepting the increased coverage and federal dollars seems like a no brainer. State agency personnel and providers are the ones who actually see the people with the needs and the results of those needs not being met. But most people are busy making a living, taking care of their family and trying to get a little ahead of the game. All they know about the Affordable Care Act--and the people who need it--is what they've been told. In Oklahoma, almost everything they've been told is negative.

 

            The governor and the legislature are going to react to what they think most of the public wants. If the issue is close they may be willing to exercise some leadership, but many politicians are unwilling to "fall on their sword" for an issue that has little or no public support, even when they feel it's the right thing to do. As long as most of the public is a combination of negative or uninterested about the ACA, a few loud negative voices will continue to dominate the public forum and control the agenda.      

      

            In my opinion the only way for Oklahoma to obtain the benefits of the ACA is to change the public conversation to the point our leaders will be willing to accept them. That will likely take a campaign. Those who care will need to organize, speak out and spend some money on a campaign.

Okla. income, sales taxes push July revenue up

By Tim Talley

Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY - Healthy increases in state income and sales tax receipts offset declines in revenue from oil and gas production to push total state revenue collections slightly higher last month, Oklahoma Treasurer Ken Miller said Thursday.

Overall collections rose by a little more than 1 percent in July, the first month of the 2013 fiscal year. Miller said average growth over the past year has been 7.2 percent, including an almost 11-percent increase in income tax collections and almost 9-percent growth in sales tax collections.

But collections from oil and natural gas production plunged 43 percent for the month, the eighth consecutive monthly decline in gross production tax collections from the same month of 2011.

"While the overall rate of growth in collections has slowed somewhat in the past few months due to lower energy prices and production, most other economic indicators remain positive," Miller said. "Our July report shows sustained consumer confidence in the economy with Oklahomans earning and spending more money."

Rising state income tax collections reflects the state's 4.7-percent unemployment rate compared to the national rate of 8.2 percent, Miller said. With an unemployment rate of 5 percent, the Oklahoma City metropolitan area tops the list of the lowest jobless rates among 49 U.S. cities with a population of 1 million or more, he said.

"Our employment picture is very good," Miller said. "Oklahoma has many reasons to be optimistic about its economy."

But outside influences, including the European debt crisis, an economic slowdown in China and political uncertainty in Washington, could have an impact on the state's economy, he said.

"We need Congress to act responsibly," the state treasurer said.

Gross collections in July totaled almost $855 million, up about $9.5 million from July 2011. Gross income tax collections, a combination of personal and corporate income taxes, generated $247 million, up about 10 percent from a year ago.

Sales tax collections totaled $354 million, up about 7 percent from the previous July. But gross production taxes on oil and natural gas generated just $58 million last month, a $44 million decline from July 2011. Motor vehicle taxes produced almost $58 million, up $3 million from the prior year.

Miller said concern over low natural gas prices have eased somewhat in recent weeks as natural gas spot prices have risen. Natural gas dropped 8 percent Thursday to close at $2.92 per thousand cubic feet.

Miller noted that crude oil prices have also fallen in recent months. The price of U.S. crude fell $1.78 Thursday to close at $87.13 per barrel.

Gross revenue since August 2011 totals almost $11 billion, almost $738 million more than the previous 12-month period.

Conservatives work to cull moderate Republicans

By John Hanna

Associated Press

TOPEKA, Kan. - Frustrated by their inability to achieve some policy goals, conservatives in Republican states are turning against moderate members of their own party, trying to drive them out of state legislatures to clear the way for reshaping government across a wide swath of mid-America controlled by the GOP.

Political groups are helping finance the efforts by supporting primary election challenges targeting several dozen moderate Republicans in the Midwest and South, especially prominent lawmakers who run key state committees.

Two years after Republicans swept into power in many state capitols, the challengers say it's time to adopt more conservative policies.

"If you don't believe in that playbook, then why are you on the team?" declared Greg Smith, a Kansas state representative who's running for the state Senate, with the goal of making it more conservative.

The push is most intense in Kansas, where conservatives are attempting to replace a dozen moderate Republican senators who bucked new Gov. Sam Brownback's move to slash state income taxes.

The Club for Growth, a major conservative interest group, is spending about $500,000 in Missouri this year. That's double the amount it invested two years ago. The anti-tax group Americans for Prosperity opened new chapters in Iowa, Minnesota and New Mexico. The conservative business group Texans for Lawsuit Reform spent $3.5 million on legislative candidates in the first half of 2012, more than double its total during the same period two years ago.

The primary strife reflects differences that were somewhat concealed in the party's triumphant victories in 2010, when, aided by public discontent about the economy, the GOP won its broadest control of state government since the Great Depression. After the vote, Republicans held governorships in 29 states and control of most of the legislatures from Michigan to Texas.

Conservatives, some aligned with the tea party movement, hoped to begin realizing their vision of smaller government and of a reformed education system that would give parents more alternatives to traditional public schools. But some of their initiatives were scaled back by GOP colleagues to soften the impact on public schools and other public services.

Oklahoma Republican Gov. Mary Fallin's plan to begin phasing out the state income tax was blocked entirely, and Brownback and Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman had to settle for a fraction of the tax cuts they wanted.

Conservative leaders say they are determined to seize a historic opportunity. Primary elections and runoffs are continuing in key states through August. The results so far have been mixed, with the overall effect this year likely to be incremental.

"It's no secret that there's kind of a battle for what the Republican Party will be into the future and, as a consequence, what this state will look like into the future," said Mark Desetti, a lobbyist for the largest teachers' union in Kansas.

The conservative push is being felt in states that are already solidly conservative, like Texas and Idaho, along with others, like Missouri, with a tradition of political moderation and divided power.

"Republican legislatures continue to move more and more to the right of center," said Alan Cobb, who's overseeing state-level operations for Americans for Prosperity. "You do have this tension everywhere."

The conflict in Kansas is heading toward a showdown in the Aug. 7 primary. Conservatives want to oust Senate President Steve Morris, Senate Majority Leader Jay Emler and the leaders of most of the important committees in the state Senate, which acted as a check on Brownback's move to make Kansas a laboratory of conservative fiscal and social policy.

"It is all about taking over the state in a conservative vein and eliminating as much as possible anybody who didn't agree with their philosophical ideas," said moderate GOP incumbent Sen. Tim Owens, one of the targets.

His opponent, conservative freshman state Rep. Jim Denning, said Owens has "lost his edge to lead, to negotiate, to stick to just Republican principles."

The governor is taking the unusual step of formally endorsing some challengers because the moderates, in resisting his proposals, "promote a Democrat agenda," he said.

The Kansas Chamber of Commerce raised $163,000 for the effort last year - a significant sum in a less populous state like Kansas - with more than $36,000 coming from Koch Industries Inc., the company led by Charles Koch, a prominent political donor.

So far this year, conservative challengers in Texas have unseated three state House committee chairmen who were accused by tea party adherents of cooperating with Democrats on legislation. A conservative opponent knocked off a moderate state senator in the Colorado primary.

In a key race in Missouri, David Pearce, the chairman of the Senate's Education Committee, faces a Republican primary challenge next month from a conservative opponent who has received $50,000 from a major anti-tax group.

In Kansas, conservatives hope to win enough races to spur the legislature to restrict how labor unions raise campaign money, to remake the state's appellate courts and to enact more conservative social policy. They've been disappointed that the state hasn't moved new public employees into a 401(k)-style pension plan, and there's been no serious consideration of school choice initiatives.

Personhood backers appeal Okla. Supreme Court ruling

By Tim Talley

Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY - Supporters of granting personhood rights to human embryos asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to reverse a ruling by the Oklahoma Supreme Court that stopped the proposed constitutional amendment.

Personhood USA asked the nation's highest court to allow Oklahoma citizens to circulate and collect signatures to support a ballot measure that would place the issue before voters, alleging that "it was error for the Oklahoma Supreme Court to assume the power to strike a proposed law before it had been enacted."

The state Supreme Court ruled that the ballot question, if approved, would unconstitutionally ban abortion. The group's 34-page petition said that decision was contrary to rulings in similar cases by the U.S. Supreme Court that determined courts should not invalidate state statutes "based upon a worst-case analysis that may never occur."

"The Oklahoma Supreme Court violated these basic rules of judicial review, frustrating the intent and infringing the right of the sovereign people of Oklahoma," the petition says.

Keith Mason, founder of Personhood USA, a national anti-abortion advocacy group, said the state Supreme Court's decision effectively denied Oklahomans the opportunity to debate and vote on the proposed amendment.

"This is about equal access to the democratic process," Mason said. "No citizen can be blocked from expressing their views on such a critical issue as life."

The personhood ballot measure, Initiative Petition 395, would grant human embryos the rights and privileges of citizens in Oklahoma. It is similar to a measure filed in the Oklahoma Legislature that lawmakers didn't approve this year.

Supporters have said their goal is to set up a legal challenge to the landmark Roe v. Wade decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 that gave women a legal right to abortion. Similar personhood measures have been proposed in other states.

The Oklahoma ballot measure was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of several Oklahoma doctors and residents who opposed it. Opponents claimed it would effectively ban abortions without exception and interfere with a woman's right to use certain forms of contraception and medical procedures, such as in vitro fertilization.

In a unanimous ruling on April 30, the state Supreme Court sided with opponents and said to define a fertilized human egg as a person "is clearly unconstitutional."

Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, called Personhood USA's appeal an attack on the reproductive rights of women.

"The proponents of this measure have made explicit the ultimate objective of the anti-reproductive rights movement: to strip all Americans of their constitutional right to make their own decisions about whether and when to have children," Northrup said in a statement on the organization's website.

"They're coming after birth control. They would make access to abortion illegal in all circumstances. They would even threaten the ability of couples with fertility problems to seek medical assistance in starting a family," Northrup said.

"Regardless of whether these assaults take aim at one particular reproductive health service or all at once, they all must be regarded as serious threats to the constitutional rights of all Americans. And they must be decisively rejected as such," she said.

Governor makes appointments

OKLAHOMA CITY (JR) - Gov. Mary Fallin has made appointments to the Oklahoma Board of Health, Board of Pharmacy, Board of Dentistry, Board of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services and the Physician Manpower Training Commission.

 

Tim Starkey of Alva was appointed to the Board of Health. Starkey is CEO at Great Salt Plains Health Center in Cherokee. He served as CEO of Memorial Hospital of Texas County in Guymon. He is president of the Oklahoma Primary Care Association. Starkey received a bachelor's degree from Oklahoma Panhandle State University and a master's degree in business administration with an emphasis in health care management from the University of Phoenix. He is replacing Alfred Baldwin Jr.

 

Jim Spoon of Sand Springs was appointed to the Board of Pharmacy. Spoon is a pharmacist and owner of Spoon Drug in Sand Springs and T Roy Barnes Drugry in Tulsa. He is a past president of the Oklahoma Pharmacists Association, a board member of the Pharmacy Providers of Oklahoma and a committee member of the National Association of Community Pharmacists. Spoon received a bachelor's degree from Southwestern Oklahoma State University and a master's degree in pharmacy from the University of Oklahoma. He is replacing Bill Osborn and will serve as a member selected from a list provided by the Oklahoma Pharmacists Association.  

 

Lori Roberts of Broken Arrow was appointed to the Board of Dentistry. Roberts is an attorney at Carroll, Ward and Roberts. Roberts received both a bachelor's degree and a law degree from the University of Tulsa. She is replacing David Newsome and will serve as a lay member.

 

Bruce T. Fisher of Oklahoma City was reappointed to the Board of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. Fisher is a curator at the Oklahoma Historical Society. He previously served as director of institutional development at Langston University and also served as assistant secretary of state in the Bellmon administration. Fisher earned a bachelor's degree in history from Langston University and a master's degree in history from Texas Southern University. Fisher has served on the board since 2005.

 

Layne Subera of Skiatook and Pam Spanbauer of Oklahoma City were appointed to the Physician Manpower Training Commission.

Subera is a physician at Skiatook Osteopathic Clinic. He is the president-elect of the Oklahoma Osteopathic Association, chairman of the Bailey Education Foundation, chairman of the audit committee for the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians and an Oklahoma delegate at the American Osteopathic Association House of Delegates. Subera received a bachelor's degree from Oklahoma State University and a doctorate of osteopathic medicine from the OSU College of Osteopathic Medicine in Tulsa. He is replacing Duane Koehler, who resigned, and will serve as a practicing osteopathic physician.

 

Spanbauer is executive director of patient care services at Mercy Health Center in Oklahoma City. She is a registered nurse and a member of the American Nurses Association and the Oklahoma Nurses Association. Spanbauer received both a bachelor's degree in nursing and a master's of education from the University of Central Oklahoma. She is replacing Mike Brown and will serve as a lay member.

Have a good week.  Give me a call at 918.671.6860 if I can be of help in any way

                  Steve Lewis

 
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2012 DEADLINES
 
 




This Week's News
July Revenue Up
Conservatives Cull Moderate Republicans
Supreme Court Ruling Appealed
Governor Makes Appointments